Month: September 2009

God, I feel old

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God, I feel old

I was having a chat with the new PhD student at work today and ended up reminiscing about the arcana of US Robotic S-Registries, why QEMM-386 was an evil, evil piece of software and why the assembly demo scene was inherently cool and elegant. He hadn’t heard about any of this. Don’t get me wrong. Having seemingly unlimited amounts of computing power and resources is a good thing. Being able to download HD video at gigabit speeds is a very good thing. There is a feeling of rose-tinted nostalgia about being in my parents’ basement trying to get my very first PC to boot windows 3.1 with enough base RAM available to start Wolfenstein or to get my modem init string to the point where I could squeeze out those last few bauds to download porn that little much quicker :)

Life was more frustrating, if simpler, back then :)

Current Mood:Busy emoticon Busy

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Quote of the day

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Quote of the day

This quote comes from a CV submitted for a rather high-ranking position. It features prominently at the top of the first page, generally where people put the really high-impact, important stuff:

– In-depth ability to walk over rough, uneven, or rocky surfaces.

This, of course, is essential for a desk job.

Current Mood:Amused emoticon Amused

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What I want for xmas

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What I want for xmas

(don’t laugh – I know it’s early and I know I ranted about it earlier, but I was asked about it a few times already)

I would like, in no particular order:

– A multi-region DVD player with HDMI connections that can do 1080p upscaling with divX playback
possibly: http://www.mrmdvd.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1045
– Star Trek DVD
– FurTV DVD Box Set
– The Boat that Rocked DVD
– a smoke box and rib rack for the BBQ
– new frying pans
– more Robert Welch kitchen knives

Current Mood:Amused emoticon Amused

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Euromillions follow-up

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Euromillions follow-up

As a follow-up to this post, I found out why the same numbers were always coming up. It has to do with the sorting of the numbers and the distribution it produces.


(right-click and save image to view it at full resolution)

In a nutshell, if you simulate 1,000,000 lottery tickets and plot the frequency of the sorted numbers at each position, you get the graph as above. Increasing the number of simulated draws just improves the normality of the distribution at each position.

Not rocket science, but still a pretty picture :)

Current Mood:Amused emoticon Amused

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Any number theorists out there?

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Any number theorists out there?

Based on Derren Brown’s magical formula to win on the lottery, I hacked together a little bit of code to try and win the upcoming EuroMillion draw (yes, I know I’m sad).

The code generates random tickets with 5 unique numbers between 1 and 50 and 2 potentially non-unique numbers between 1 and 9. For example:

Ticket{numbers=[1, 14, 17, 21, 28], stars=[5, 2]}
Ticket{numbers=[2, 6, 8, 25, 43], stars=[1, 2]}
Ticket{numbers=[12, 23, 30, 36, 41], stars=[5, 4]}
Ticket{numbers=[8, 19, 28, 37, 41], stars=[5, 9]}
Ticket{numbers=[6, 20, 22, 28, 30], stars=[5, 6]}
Ticket{numbers=[2, 3, 33, 36, 40], stars=[9, 2]}
Ticket{numbers=[20, 26, 30, 39, 50], stars=[6, 5]}
Ticket{numbers=[11, 13, 22, 30, 38], stars=[3, 6]}
Ticket{numbers=[10, 14, 17, 45, 47], stars=[8, 7]}

You’ll notice that the numbers are sorted in increasing order, except for the stars. If you then take the average of the numbers at each position, you’ll get the “winning” number, or so the magic goes.

The interesting bit though, which I’m curious about, is that if you generate more than 100 or so tickets in one go, the average is always the same. Why is this, and does it make sense?

Current Mood:Amused emoticon Amused

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I call Bullshit!

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I call Bullshit!

Last night, I, like 3 million other losers, stayed up late to watch the broadcast of Derren Brown’s latest stunt of “guessing” the lottery numbers before they were drawn by the National Lottery. We’d been talking about it all week – as expected from the massive hype generated by the publicity campaign. I was, in a word, unimpressed. I can think of three ways right off the bat how the stunt could have been pulled off.

If he’d said, plainly and without any jibba-jabba, I predict numbers X-Y-Z-A-B-C and that’s what came up from the draw, *then* I’d have been impressed. This BS of “we can’t legally show the numbers because BBC1 has the legal right to announce the numbers first” is just a flimsy excuse to buy time to make a grand revelation after the event. So yeah. I call bullshit and won’t watch the rest of the events.

Current Mood:Cynical emoticon Cynical

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The end of an era

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The end of an era

Hail to the chief! It was Lennart’s last day at the office yesterday. Even though he’s only leaving next week for Belgium, he’s on holiday from today to use up the last of his leave time. It’s going to be weird without him at the office. I’m happy for him though – a full tenured professorship and senior lecturer and he’s only 33. That’s impressive, and it’s also an offer he couldn’t refuse. As a gag-ish gift, we bought him a tweed jacket and had leather patches sewn on the elbows, as now befitting to his stature ;) Getting people to sign the card was a nightmare though. Between holidays, sickness, conferences and general not-being-at-the-officeness, it was a cast iron PITA to get hold of people.

On a professional note, the office is going to be rudderless for the next 6 months – at least – until we can hire his replacement and that person comes in and gets a feel for things. I can only hope that it’s somebody with a decent head on their shoulders and that will fight for us, not against us. Said person will have mighty big shoes to fill. I have to say that we’re all a bit anxious about the state of things to come.

On a personal note, I’m saddened that a friend is leaving. I don’t have many of those in the UK and I’m going to miss him and his various zen koans and happy demeanour.

I shall take inspiration from his greatness :)

Current Mood:Sad emoticon Sad

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[Recipe] Fish cakes

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[Recipe] Fish cakes

We had leftover veg from making food for the beastie so I decided to get creative.

I mixed the mashed root veg (potatoes, carrots, swede) with a tin of flaked tuna, some grated mature cheddar, a bit of tabasco, some parsley, onion salt, pepper, and some breadcrumbs to thicken the mix. After forming into patties, dredging in egg wash and coating with breadcrumbs seasoned with paprika, I pan fried on both sides to color the cakes then finished them in the oven for 15 minutes at 220. Very nummy indeed!

Current Mood:Happy emoticon Happy

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